LOST: Episode 5.07

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

This one has to be Terry O'Quinn's Emmy submission episode. He was amazing, particularly in the suicide scene.

And this one shouldn't be too difficult to recap, since it was pretty straightforward storytelling. Well, as straightforward as a LOST episode can ever be!

On Island

Cesar - the guy who gave his condolences to Jack in line at the airport, and who was on Flight 316 - is ransacking a Dharma office in the dark.  He finds an old LIFE magazine, with a picture of a hydrogen bomb on the front (I think), and a file filled with charts like this:

Written all over it: Things like "Space - Time", "Real Time", "Imaginary Time" and "Imaginary Space".  Hmm.

He also finds a sawed off shotgun, loaded, that he sticks in his manpurse just as Ilana - Sayid's marshall - comes in and tells him that a man in a suit was found just standing in the water.  They go to the beach, where among the survivors of Flight 316, they find John Locke.  Alive and well and nattily dressed.

The following morning, John stands on the beach, looking out at the water, completely at peace.  When John asks Ilana where the outrigger canoes came from, she tells him that they were already there, and that the pilot and a woman took one of the canoes and left.  Since John is looking out over the water at what appears to be another island, I'd say that 316 crashed on the Hydra station island, and Frank and the woman took the canoe to the main Island.  Ilana asks John who he is, where he came from and why he's dressed so nicely.  He says he's dressed this way because he died and this was what he was going to be buried in.  And then we get a flashback.

John's Flashback

John turns the wheel and lands in Tunisia, the same place Ben (and I assume the polar bear) landed.  With his broken leg, he can't move, but there are surveillance cameras watching the spot and a bunch of Tunisians eventually come and get him and bring him to a hospital, where his leg is reset in the most primitive of ways.  Ouch.  He loses consciousness, and when he wakes up some time later, his leg is in a cast and Charles Widmore is sitting bedside.

Widmore tells Locke that he's special and that Widmore has been trying to protect Locke - and the O6 - all along.  He tells Locke that Ben tricked him into leaving the Island.  He gives Locke a new identity (Jeremy Bentham), a passport, a car and a driver (Matthew Abbadon) in order to help him get the O6 back to the Island.  John doesn't trust him (and I'm not sure I do, either), but he needs his help so what choice does he really have?  Widmore tells him that Eloise Hawking will help them all get back to Island.  He also tell him that there is a war coming, and John needs to be on that Island when it does.

John visits Sayid (who is doing a Habitat for Humanity thing!), Kate, Hurley and Jack, and they all tell him the same thing: No.  (He does not visit Sun because of his promise to Jin) He also pays a visit to Walt, just to see that he is OK.  And Ben is following him.

With each rejection from the O6, and with the likelihood that he will have to die looming in his near future, John becomes increasingly disheartened.  It doesn't help that Jack and Kate are particularly cruel to him, telling him that he's a lonely, unimportant old man who loves no one and whom no one loves.  Nice.  John also tells Jack that his father says hello - way to go John for figuring that one out - and that just sends Jack over the edge.

When John tries to reconnect to someone he had loved - Helen - he finds that she has died in the intervening three years from a brain aneurysm.  Abbadon is shot and killed while they visit her grave (by Ben), and John gets into a serious car crash while fleeing the scene.  How many times is John Locke going to have to wake up in a hospital?

Back at his hotel room, despondent, Locke writes his suicide note to Jack, and strings himself up with an extension cord.  As he's about to hang himself, Ben breaks down the door and talks him out of it.  He tells John that it is he who has been protecting everyone from Widmore and not the other way around.  Ben really appears to care about John, but when he hears that Jin survived the blast, something changes.  Hearing that Widmore told John that Eloise Hawking was in Los Angeles and would help him get back to the Island seems to be a tipping point for Ben.  I don't know what the information changed in Ben's mind, but it seems he now feels he doesn't need John anymore and so he grabs the extension cord and strangles John to death!  Dude!  And Michael Emerson actually makes me feel sorry for Ben as he does it.  He stages the scene to look like a suicide and tells John's hanging body that he'll miss him.

Back on the Island

John and Cesar are in the same Dharma office from the beginning of the episode.  Cesar tells him about the flashing light just before the crash and how some of the people disappeared from the plane right before it crashed.  He takes John to see some of the injured survivors and who should be lying there but John's old friend Ben.

Thoughts:

• If nothing else, this episode illustrated just how much John belongs on the Island, how at peace he seems to be.  It helped me to understand why he was so crazy-obsessed about not leaving all these years.  And since John seems to be quite corporeal - eating a mango, for instance - he is not a ghost.  He is actually revived.  Does that mean Christian is also really alive?
• I am not too jazzed about all of those survivors of Flight 316.  We just got rid of the extraneous 815ers!
• Do you think Sun is the woman who went with Frank?  That's who I thought of first, but then wouldn't she have disappeared along with Jack, Kate and Hurley?  And where's Sayid?
• So who's the real bad guy, Ben or Widmore?  Perhaps it's both of them.

People actually notice this stuff?

"Michelle Obama Goes Sleeveless, Again"

That is actually the subject of a post in a New York Times political blog. That Michelle Obama has great arms and likes to show them off? And they make it sound like a criticism. What is wrong with that blogger?

I have to say, however, that the stupid article was worth this fantastic comment by someone named "TJ":

It’s enshrined in the second amendment that Michelle Obama has the right to bare arms.

Ha! Good one!

poll by twiigs.com

God Bless Lily

02-22-2009 105, originally uploaded by gina64 [on a short break].

Lily Margaret Gomes Dardis was christened on Sunday, February 22. Here are some photos from the day.

The voice on the other end of the line.

Here's a nice, short NYTimes article about how the air traffic controller for the incredible Hudson River landing has dealt with the experience:

Air Traffic Controller Tells Gripping Tale of Hudson Landing

TV Talk: Random Bits

'Fringe' moves production to Vancouver - I think this is awesome news. The X-Files' first 5 (and I think its best) seasons were filmed in Vancouver. The city and its surrounding area were used to great effect in establishing the spooky quality of the shows, and I think it will help do the same for Fringe.

Ron Howard says the Arrested Development movie is going to happen: Still no word on whether or not George Michael will be in it.

Glen Larson is making a movie based on the original, 1978 Battlestar Galactica TV series. I think I am going to cry. Please don't go see this. Please!

Now where am I going to get my Hollywood insider scoop without feeling dirty afterward?

Defamer is getting "folded" into the bigger Gawker media network, and will be a mere shell of its former self.  All of its current editors are leaving and I've noticed a tone shift already. (Blind items?  Really?)

Mind you, I am not above indulging in salacious gossip.  I'm just picky about where I get it from.  Defamer was not only one of the best written, most well-informed gossip sites, but they also had some Hollywood street cred.  And the commenters are amazing.

It looks like that is all going to go away now.  Damn.

LOST: Episode 5.06

316

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
~ John 3:16

We're not going to Guam, are we?
~ Frank Lapidus, with easily the best line of the night

I cannot believe they are back on the Island already, this early in the season!  There must be some serious shenanigans waiting in the wings if they didn't leave something this momentous for the finale.

So this was another Jack episode that I liked. I really didn't care for Kate - and that may be because most of her story was not shown and we only saw her mooning about - but I liked Jack for a change.  (and I really dig the longer hair)

On the Island (we're not supposed to know it's the Island yet, though)

In a scene eerily reminiscent of the opening of the Pilot, Jack awakens on the ground, in a dark suit and tie.  As he gets up and tries to figure out where he is, he hears yelling that I could totally tell was Hurley.  It is Hurley, and Jack saves him (and a guitar case, huh?) from drowning.  Of course he does!  They find Kate unconscious at the edge of the lagoon, and bring her around.  They're all like, "WTF just happened?"

Off Island - "46 hours earlier"

Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond all follow Mrs. H down to basement of the church.  She leads them to a steel door that has a Dharma logo on it. (!)  She opens it and they enter a room with a map on the floor, and a swinging pendulum in the middle.  There are also various computers and chalkboards with formulas on them.  She tells them that the church sits an a "pocket" of electromagnetic energy, similar to pockets that exist all over the world, and that are all connected.  She talks about "a man" (Alvar Hanso?) who discovered that he could use these pockets to locate the Island, which is also on a pocket but which is always on the move.  He called the church site "The Lamppost".  She says that using the tools in that room, they can tell not where the Island is, but when it will be, and they have a short 36 hrs before their window of opportunity closes.

Desmond can't believe they're all considering going back to the bloody Island and angrily tells Mrs. H that Daniel needs her help and that he's finished with the Island. When she tells him that the Island isn't finished with him, he tells her she can stick her bloody precious Island where the sun don't shine!  And then he storms out.

Mrs. H tells Jack, Ben and Sun that there's an Ajira Airways Flight 316 flying from LA to Guam in 36 hours that will pass right over the Island and their "window" of time, and they need to be on it.  She speaks to Jack privately, handing him Locke's suicide note, which is in a closed envelope addressed to Jack, and which he refuses to read.  She also tells Jack that he must reproduce as closely as possible the conditions under which they first arrived at the Island, or the results this time could be unpredictable.  She tells him that Locke in his coffin will be a proxy for his father's coffin and that Jack needs to put something of his father's in with Locke.  Sun leaves the church first and then Ben tells Jack he will see him at the airport.  First, however, he needs to keep a promise to an old friend.  Oh no.

Jack gets a call from the old people's home that his grandpa Senator Matheson has been acting up again.  When Jack goes to see him, he finds his father's shoes.  He asks grandpa if he can have them and grandpa says yes.  When Jack gets home, he finds a morose and practically semi-conscious Kate lying like a dead person on his bed.  He asks what's wrong and she says she's going back to the Island with him, but without Aaron, and he's not allowed to ask any questions about Aaron and then she starts making out like crazy with him.  The next morning, she acts like she hates Jack's guts and does the walk of shame when he gets a telephone call.

It's Ben on the phone, and he ain't doin' too good.  He's on a pay phone at a marina (oh no) and he is beat up BAD, and is covered in blood (his own, I hope!) and holding his arm.  He needs Jack to pick up Locke's body and bring it to the airport and get it on the flight.

If Ben just killed Penny I will track him down and kill him myself.

Anyway, the airport.  A bunch of things happen at the airport:

When he overhears Jack talking to an airline clerk about transporting his dead friend to Guam, a nice little guy behind him in line offers his condolences.  We are so going to see that guy again;

Hurley is there somehow, reading a comic book like he was in the Pilot, and buying up as many seats on the plane as possible so that if it does crash, as few people as possible will be killed or hurt - he's also carrying a guitar case;

and Sayid shows up, too, but in the custody of a woman who appears to be a Us Marshall (like Kate in custody in the Pilot), and wearing the cast offs of a Miami Vice drug dealer.

Once they are all onboard - including Ben, who shows up last minute with his arm in a cast - the pilot makes an announcement and whadya know, it's Frank Lapidus!!  The plane takes off in a wonderfully scored, beautifully shot moment, where you see the apprehension on everyone's face.  Once they are in the air, Ben convinces Jack to read Locke's suicide note, telling him that he is not to blame for Locke's death.  Jack opens the note, which simply reads, "Dear Jack, I wish you had believed me. JL"  That ought to help with the guilt. Yeah.

The plane hits some turbulence, then hits a LOT of turbulence, then the bright light flashes, and then...

On the Island

In a replay of the opener, Jack wakes up on the Island, jumps in the water and saves Hurley, and revives Kate.  They all hear the sound of a car or truck approaching.  The blue Dharma van then drives up to the edge of the lagoon, looking brand spanking new, and a man in a Dharma jumpsuit climbs out, walks up to Jack, Hurley and Kate, and points a gun at them.  I totally thought it was going to be Horace.  But it isn't - it's Jin.  Jin!  Working for Dharma!

Some notes:

• Did anyone else notice that the black and white photo that Jack was looking at in The Lamppost station (I suppose we can call it a Dharma station, right?) is an Army photo from 1954?  Must be from the Jughead bomb days.
• I like that Jack is becoming less of a Doubting Thomas, and it's especially bitter sweet after seeing what Locke wrote in his suicide note.
• I take it we are going to see what happened with everyone else offscreen in another episode.  I bet Charlie appeared to Hurley, and told him to go back and to bring his guitar case as a proxy for him.  I'm not sure what's up with Sayid, except he looks like he got pulled from A Chorus Line rehearsals.  And did Claire appear to Kate again?
• It seems as though at least Jack, Kate and Hurley have landed during the Dharma days, which is when the final Island flash must have landed Sawyer, Juliet, Jin, Daniel and Miles.  They must have infiltrated Dharma somehow.  I wonder what happened to everyone else on the plane?  Do we ask where they are?  Or when they are?
• As a whole, the episode really just exists as set up for future events, but I think I liked it  because it was filled with some pretty neat moments: the plane's great takeoff scene, which I already mentioned; Frank's line "We're not going to Guam, are we?"; Jack's happiness at seeing Sun at the airport; Ben's "My mother taught me" line; the scene where Jack puts his father's shows on Locke; the revelation of Locke's note; and the revelation of Jin.  Definitely enough to make it enjoyable for me.

LOST recap will be up tomorrow.

I had to be responsible tonight and forego the recap and pay bills that I have neglected for far too long.

This?

SUCKS:

Daisies' Final Episodes to Bloom this Spring — But Not on TV

For the moment, Paleyfest attendees will be the first to see Daisies' final hours, with a screening set for Sunday, April 19, at Hollywood's ArcLight Cinema. Further sweetening the deal will be series creator and executive producer Bryan Fuller, on hand to introduce the event.

The article says attendees will be the "first" to see the episodes, so maybe there is hope that ABC's stone cold heart will melt and they'll actually air them at some point before the DVDs come out in the summer...but I doubt it.

ABC sucks. Suckity-suck-suck-SUCKS!

(that ought to get me some interesting Google hits)

Happy Valentine's Day

LOST 5.05 Discussion

OK, a few things:

I’ve been reading some discussion about the episode online, and I guess Rousseau had spoken in earlier episodes about “that time Montand lost his arm”. Huh! I have no memory of that, but it’s cool to know that they're keeping track of some of this stuff.

When Montand calmly spoke from under the temple after the smoke monster pulled him down, I almost laughed out loud. It reminded me of that scene in Austin Powers where one of Dr. Evil’s henchmen is dropped through a trap door, where he’s progressively, shot, stabbed, set on fire...all out of sight. And after each assault, he sort of meekly says things like, “Can someone help me please? I’m not dead yet, just badly burned...” Ha!

So we finally got to see the Temple. Did you notice the hieroglyphs on the outside of it? They are the same as the ones that would pop up on the counter when the button wasn’t pushed.

So what was this “sickness” that Rousseau talked about? We know now that it wasn’t the Minkowski/Charlotte effect, or the sickness that the pregnant women died from...was it brainwashing (for lack of a better word)? Or was it really Rousseau who was the crazy one?

Daniel must go back to Dharma time during one of the flashes (or perhaps on his own?), and he must try to change the future by telling Charlotte she will die if she goes back to the island, even though he knows that it’s not possible. Right?

It’s good to know that John didn’t have to break his promise to Jin, since he died before talking to Sun about Jin. Right?

What is Christian? He must be some kind of apparition, non-corporeal, and that’s why he couldn’t help John stand.

One of the best scenes was seeing Sawyer so excited to see Jin.

This show looks AWESOME in HD. Wow.

LOST: Episode 5.05

This Place Is Death

OK, whose head is spinning? Mine! This oughta be fun...

On the Island

So much shit went down, I'm not sure I can remember it all.

We begin with Jin, who when we left him had flashed to the time when Rousseau and her crew were first marooned on the island. Jin wants to find his camp and the Frenchies are looking for a radio tower. They are trying to find the source of a broadcast of a man reciting the Numbers. Jin doesn't know how to get to the tower, but he says he can get to his camp from the tower, so he follows the Frenchies. On the way, they encounter the Smoke Monster, which kills the other female crew member and grabs Montand and drags him to the Temple. The Temple! Finally! The SM tries to pull Montand underground, but Jin and the Frenchies hold tight. WAY too tight, as it turns out when Montand's arm is ripped from his body when the SM pulls him below ground. The three (two?) remaining Frenchie guys go down after him, and Rousseau stays above ground because of the baby. Then time flashes.

After the flash, Jin is alone. He sees a pillar of smoke in the distance and follows it to a camp on a beach. He finds the dead bodies of two of the Frenchies, and then comes upon Rousseau and her husband Robert fighting and pointing guns at each other. She says the SM made them sick, Robert says no, it's just a security system, please believe me. She does and lowers her gun and then Robert shoots at her. Lucky for Rousseau, Robert's gun doesn't fire and she shoots him dead. When Jin runs out to stop all of the shooting, Rousseau tries to kill him, too, but time flashes.

Jin wakes up in the jungle with another gun pointing at him, but this time it's Sawyer's. Sawyer! They found Jin! Sawyer gets all goofy and happy and gives Jin a big old hug.



Hee! They bring Jin up to speed about the time flashes and how everyone's getting sick and how they need to get to The Orchid so John can leave and bring back the O6, including Sun. Charlotte does the explaining. In Korean. Huh? Coincidence? I don't know...

As they hike toward The Orchid, the time flashes become more frequent and more intense and everyone - but Daniel and Locke - is getting sicker. Charlotte finally collapses, delirious, and can go no further. Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Miles and Jin continue on and Daniel stays with Charlotte, but not before Charlotte angrily tells Jin to not let John bring Sun back to the Island because "This place is Death!"

She also tells Locke that if they arrive at The Orchid during a time when it didn't exist and it's not there, to look for a well. They leave, and she explains to Daniel that she knows about the well because she was born and raised on the Island (knew it!) and her parents worked for Dharma. Something happened and she and her mother left and they never saw her father again. She spent her whole life trying to find it again so she could return. It wasn't until she got to the Island that she started to remember that when she was a little girl on the Island, a scary man came to her and told her that she can't come back to the Island after she leaves, or she will die. And that the scary man was Daniel. Then Charlotte dies. Bye-bye Charlotte.

The Orchid station is there when Locke and company arrive, but time flashes and it disappears, so they look for and find the well that Charlotte told them about. John decides he has to climb the rope to the bottom of the well, but before he leaves Jin makes him promise - PROMISE - to not bring Sun back. He gives him his wedding ring and tells John to tell Sun that he took it off of Jin's dead body. John promises.

As John descends into the well, time flashes (with the flash seeming to originate at the bottom of the well) and he falls to the bottom, suffering a compound fracture to his leg. OUCH. As he writhes on the floor, Christian Shepard appears to him and tells him that the wheel is off of its axle because Ben moved the Island, and not John, like Christian told him to. He tells John that he needs to shift the wheel back into place and then he will be able to leave. John tells Christian that Richard told him he must die in order to save the island. Christian tells him "That's why they call them sacrifices." OK, Christian? Not helpful.

In fact, Christian's really not helpful: When John asks him to help him stand because of his shattered leg, Christian says no. John gets up all by himself, makes his way to the wheel, bangs it back into place, and everything goes white.


O6 in L.A.

When last we saw them, Jack, Kate, Ben and Sayid were at the pier, being watched by Sun from a car in which she has not only Aaron in the backseat, but a pistol right next to her. Sun gets a call from Ji Yeon, who misses her mommy. Sun tells Ji Yeon that she met a new friend for her in L.A. and his name is Aaron (was Sun planning on taking him to Korea?). She tells Ji Yeon she loves her and hangs up, gets out of the car, and approaches the others. She seems to only have plans to kill Ben, who she blames for Jin's death. Kate flips out, grabs Aaron, and when she finds out that Ben and Jack want them all to go back to the Island, she gets in her car and gets outta there. Sayid does the same. But he walks because he has no car because people have been dragging his unconscious ass all over the city today.

Ben tells Sun that Jin is alive, and he can prove it if Sun will let him take her someplace to meet someone who will explain everything. I think I know who that might be...Sun agrees. They drive for a while and when Jack starts apologizing to Sun for leaving Jin behind, Ben hilariously tells them both to shut up. They eventually pull up outside of a church, where Ben gives Sun Jin's wedding ring, which he says Jin gave to Locke before Locke left the Island. After hearing this, Sun agrees to go back. What about Ji Yeon, Sun?!

As they stand there, Desmond walks up and asks why they are there.



Run, Desmond! And take Penny away before Ben gets her! When he says he came to talk to Daniel Faraday's mother, Ben looks a little confused. Not something you usually see.

Ben, Jack, Sun and Desmond go inside the church, and Ben introduces them to Eloise Hawking. She's all "That's all you brought?" and Ben's all "That's all I could round up on such short notice." And she's all, "Well then, let's get started."

This post is long enough. Some thoughts in a separate post coming up...

I like Kermit, but why can't I be someone interesting, like Gonzo?

My result:

You are Kermit the Frog.
You are reliable, responsible and caring. And you have a habit of waving your arms about maniacally.
FAVORITE EXPRESSIONS:
"Hi ho!" "Yaaay!" and "Sheesh!"
FAVORITE MOVIE:
"How Green Was My Mother"
LAST BOOK READ:
"Surfin' the Webfoot: A Frog's Guide to the Internet"
HOBBIES:
Sitting in the swamp playing banjo.
QUOTE:
"Hmm, my banjo is wet."

Why do I always have to be the sensible one?

"With all due respect, Madame President, ask around."

That's Jack Bauer telling President Taylor why she should trust him, and it's the best line I've heard in this show in a long time.

I watched 3 episodes of 24 last night, got all caught up, and now I take back what I said before about feeling bored with the show. Yes, I did watch the DVR'd eps out of a sense of obligation, but by the time I got halfway through the second one I was a goner and they had me hooked. They're doing a good job of ratcheting up the tension and drama this season, and they certainly aren't shying away from the shocking developments (the image of the 2 planes colliding mid-air, the First Dude getting injected with a paralytic drug and then trussed up and tossed in a car trunk and then getting his finger chopped off and THEN getting shot in the chest!). The implausibility factor can still be somewhat jarring - Jack, Bill and Renee can have a private audience with the President without having to pass through White House security and the President would not only take a personal call from the terrorist but would also put it on speakerphone in front of her guests? - but that's sort of what makes this show such fun.

And instead of complaining about it, now I'm really wanting know who the moley-mole-mole is. The simpering chief of staff Ethan is way too obvious...

Say hallo to mah leetle friend.

Week 5/52, originally uploaded by gina64.

I'm not sure if anyone is reading this anymore - if you are, thank you! - but I just thought I'd peek in and say that I'm still buried in work. And sick with a cold that I'm still trying to shake. The audit is scheduled for Thursday, February 19, and once that's done, I will have my life back, such as it is, and I'll have more time to post.

In the meantime, Mickey has been keeping me company, curling up under a blanket next to me on my bed. He will NOT be happy when I'm finished.

LOST: Episode 5.04

The Little Prince

Episodes that have centered on either Jack or Kate or any combination thereof have never been my favorites. They seem repetitive to me, like they're telling the same story again and again, about how Jack needs to fix everything and Kate likes to run away from her problems, and neither of them seems to grow beyond those core issues. So I wasn't really all that jazzed when I found out that this episode featured them prominently. Much to my delight, however, the "The Little Prince" followed the structure of all season 5 episodes so far, with the story being split between the O6 in L.A. and the gang back on the island, making the Jack/Kate stuff much more bearable. It's a testament to how good this season is that even the Jack and Kate episodes are good.

To recap:

O6 in L.A.

Not much really happened, actually. Jack patches up Sayid, and while Jack is pulled away from the room to be dressed down for coming back to the hospital after he was suspended, Sayid awesomely deflects another attacker. He finds a slip of paper with Kate's address on it in the bad guy's pocket. Hurley calls Jack to check on Sayid and to let them know he was in jail and safe from Ben.

At Sun's suggestion, Kate visits the lawyer and proposes a deal: let me know who your client is and I'll let you take my blood. Lawyer says no deal. Jack tracks Kate down to tell her that bad guys are after her, and together they follow the lawyer, who is meeting with the client in question. The woman he meets with is Claire's mother, and it would make sense that she would be looking to take custody of her grandson, but as it turns out, she doesn't even know Aaron exists. So who hired the lawyer to go after Kate?

Just as I thought, it was Ben who hired the attorney, probably in order to give Kate a reason to run back to the island she wanted so badly to leave.  He's probably also behind Clarie's mom's presence in L.A. somehow.  The lawyer tells Ben that Hurley won't be charged with murder and will be released the next morning.

We end their part of the story on a pier in L.A., with Sun in a car with a gun and Aaron asleep in the back seat, and she's watching Ben, Jack, Kate and Sayid, and she has murder in her eyes. Don't do it, Sun!

On the Island

Charlotte recovers from her fainting spell and nose hemorrhage.  When asked by Juliet to explain what was happening to Charlotte, Daniel compares the effect to "mental jet lag".  Juliet thinks there's more to it than that, and so do I.  The group - Locke, Sawyer, Juliet, Daniel, Charlotte and Miles - spend the episode making their way to The Orchid station.  Locke believes, for unexplained reasons, that in order to fix things, the O6 need to return and they need to go to The Orchid for that to happen.  He tells Sawyer that the O6 are not dead and that they need to go to the beach to get Daniel's Zodiac and then use it to go around to the other side of the Island, which is where The Orchid is.  While on their hike to the beach, another time flash occurs, and when Sawyer goes off to investigate some off-screen screaming, he finds PastKate delivering PastClaire's baby.  He watches the scene with immense longing, until another flash comes and Kate and Claire disappear.  The hiking resumes, and Miles suffers a nosebleed. Uh-oh.

When they get to the beach, they find that their old camp has returned, except now it appears to have been long-abandoned, with no Rose or Bernard or Vincent in sight.  Could Locke's group be in the future now?  The Zodiac is gone, but there is one of those Hawaiian canoes with the long rail alongside it - you know, like from the beginning of Hawaii Five-O! - presumably left there by the people who took the Zodiac.  Inside the canoe, Sawyer finds an Ajira Airways water bottle.  Hmm.  They decide to take the canoe to The Orchid.  While out on the open water, someone shoots at them.  The shooters are in a boat, but are too far away to be identified.  As the shooters get closer to the canoe, time flashes again, this time depositing them at night, in the middle of a thunder storm.  They paddle to the shore, where Juliet suffers a nosebleed.  Ack!  Charlotte discovers some wreckage on the beach, wreckage with French writing on it...

A raft carrying a bunch of Frenchies floats out in the storm.  They spy a body floating on a piece of wood nearby.  It's Rousseau!  Right?  Well, that's what I thought, until they got closer and I could see it was clearly a man, but even then, I had no idea who it really was..Just imagine my surprise and delight when they rolled him over and it was Jin.  JIN!  I am so, so happy he is alive!  Not only because it's sad if he's dead, but also because now we have an awesome Sun/Jin reunion to look forward to.  If Sun doesn't muck it up and kill the rest of the O6, that is.

As you could expect, in the final scene the only female Frenchie on the raft introduces herself to Jin as Danielle Rousseau.  Yay!

Thoughts/Questions:

• Who keeps attacking Sayid?  It's Widmore's men, right?  Not Ben's?
• Who do you think was shooting at the canoe?  I was thinking it was the O6.  That they had all taken an Ajira Airways flight to some Pacific destination and made their way to the Island somehow...but why would they be shooting at Locke's group?  Wouldn't they be looking for them?
• I think they intentionally give Michael Emerson the most mundane dialogue just so they can hear how well he delivers it:  "He's my lawyer."
• Since Charlotte found pretty recent French wreckage, I would assume that her group and Jin are currently in the same timeline, and have probably even been sharing the same time jumps all along.  Jin wouldn't have noticed any time differences because he's been passed out on a floating piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.  I hope they find him soon.
• The order of nosebleeds is:  1) Charlotte, 2) Miles and 3) Juliet.  If the person who has been on the island the longest gets affected first, then I bet Charlotte and Miles were born and raised there, at least for the first few years of their lives.
• For me, the best scene of the night was Sawyer watching Kate and Claire.  Not because I care about him and Kate, but because Josh Holloway really sold it.  I forget what a good actor he is because as Sawyer he's usually just scowling at people and calling them names.  But there are moments, like when time flashed and Kate disappeared and he turned to look at Locke, that remind me that Holloway can do more than that.

Just one more picture before I go. It wouldn't be a LOST recap without a Desmond screencap. Desmond was sadly missing from last night's show, so I had to revisit the rock star look from last week:

He was ROCKIN' those Elvis glasses!

The Fleet must have had layoffs, too.

Man Robs Convenience Stores With Klingon Sword:

A half hour later, police received a call from a 7-Eleven at 2407 N Union Blvd, where a male matching the previous description entered the store with a sword. He also demanded money from the store clerk. The clerk did not give him any money and the suspect transported himself out of the store

Heh. I see what you did there.

What a waste of a perfectly good looking guy.

By now, Christian Bale's rant on the set of Terminator: Salvation is all over the Internet and entertainment television, and I'm sure you've heard it, but have you seen this?



And now, we dance!

TV Talk: Winter Doldrums

I really haven't been watching all that much television in recent weeks. Granted that's partly because I've been buried in work from the office, but there's something else going on here. LOST and Battlestar Galactica are both still stay-at-home-and-DVR-high-def-and-standard-def-and-watch-it-in-real-time-appointment-television for me and, yay for that; but more often than not, I seem to be losing interest in some of my favorite shows. Or perhaps some of these shows just aren't as good as they used to be.

We all know how I feel about Heroes now, but I did give it another shot last night and watched it while I worked on some stuff I brought home from the office. I didn't even turn it on until about a quarter of the way through and it was essentially background noise. There was a time when that was unthinkable, and Heroes was appointment TV like LOST and BSG. Not anymore. And you know what? I don't feel like I missed a thing.

I have two episodes of 24 on the DVR, and I really am not in any hurry to watch them. I was never a big fan of Tony's and I think the fact that they brought him back is actually kind of cheesy, so that's a big stumbling block. I love me some Bill Buchanan and Chloe, and I love that they're operating "off the grid", but I really hate that they've put into place the same "who's the mole" scenario at the FBI and the White House, again. Perhaps if the characters this season weren't so boring, I could handle the repetitious set-up. Bring back the Logans, I say!

Fringe is the other show that has been letting me down. The two episodes they've shown since they came back from the holiday break have been mind-numbingly boring and clumsy, with gaping plotholes and poorly drawn new characters - assholish FBI agent in charge, I'm looking at you. And what's with this sister all of a sudden? This is a show without a plan, and it's starting to really show. It's like they want to be a crime procedural like a CSI and a show like LOST or The X-Files with an overarching mystery and mythology and I don't think the combination is working. There is a lot to love - Asteroid, Walter and Peter, Massive Dynamic, kick-ass Olivia - so I will still watch. But they had better get their act together soon!

Sigh. Thank God for Rock of Love Bus.

Pug on snow.

01-31-2009 022, originally uploaded by gina64.